Global Factor Performance: January 2025
The following factor performance modules have been updated on our Index website.[ref]free access for financial professionals[/ref] Factor Performance Factor Premiums Factor Data Downloads
Investigating Simple Formulaic Investing
Simple, easy-to-implement, systematic formula-based investing can still generate market outperformance, providing investors with efficient exposure to well-documented factor premiums.
What the Index Effect’s Disappearance means for Market Efficiency
One critical, yet often overlooked, choice is how stocks are weighted in the objective function during training, with equally weighted (EW) approaches being the norm. This paper investigates how such choices impact cross-sectional return predictability and the performance of trading strategies derived from these predictions, focusing on the interplay between objective function design and model outcomes.
Do sell-side analysts say “buy” while whispering “sell”?
Managers are more likely to vote for analysts who exhibit greater “say-buy/whisper-sell” behavior toward these man agers. This suggests that analysts reduce the accuracy of their public recommendations, thereby maintaining the value of their private advice to funds.
Intangibles and the Performance of the Value Factor
Systematic factor-driven value strategies have underperformed broad market indices (such as the S&P 500) over the past 15+ years. That has led many to question [...]
Frog in the Pan Momentum: International Evidence
Underreaction to continuous news plays a key role in generating momentum internationally.
Global Factor Performance: December 2024
The following factor performance modules have been updated on our Index website.
Calendar Anomalies, Much Ado About Nothing
An anomaly is a pattern in stock returns that deviates from what is expected based on established financial theories or models. These patterns can sometimes [...]
Factors are global, respectable and repeatable
The propagation of factors actually reflect valid characteristics of the markets and market fluctuations.
Improving Low Volatility Strategies
The bottom line is that returns to the low volatility anomaly have only justified investing when low-volatility stocks were in the value regime, after periods of strong market performance, and when they excluded high-volatility stocks that have low short interest (providing clues as to how to improve its performance). This may be why live funds have been generating large negative alphas once we account for common factor exposures.
Rethinking Asset Growth in Asset Pricing Models
Measures of asset growth add considerable explanatory power to asset pricing models, but wait, there’s a twist. The formulation for measuring asset growth in risk [...]
Academic Anomalies Formed After Information Events
The hurdles to adding alpha for active managers are getting higher—investment practitioners make use of it as soon as or shortly after it is available.
Artificial intelligence, firm growth, and product innovation
AI-powered growth concentrates among larger firms and is associated with higher industry concentration. Our results highlight that new technologies like AI can contribute to growth and superstar firms through product innovation.
Global Factor Performance: October 2024
The following factor performance modules have been updated on our Index website.
Analysts set price targets using trailing P/E ratios
Trailing twelve-month P/E ratios account for 91% of the variation in analysts’ price targets. We construct a new kind of asset-pricing model around this fact and show that it explains the market response to earnings surprises.
Can Skewness Identify Future Outperforming Mutual Funds
While the skewness metric did demonstrate that it could select funds with managers skilled a security selection, the fund’s expenses and implementation meant that the fund was just about able to cover its expenses, and that was before the negative impact of active management on after-tax returns—and the finding was not statistically significant at even the 10% level of confidence.
Global Factor Performance: September 2024
The following factor performance modules have been updated on our Index website.[ref]free access for financial professionals[/ref] Factor Performance Factor Premiums Factor Data Downloads
Can smart rebalancing improve factor portfolios?
This paper provides new evidence on the efficacy of prioritizing transactions so as to focus portfolio turnover on the trades that offer the strongest signals and hence the highest potential performance impact.
Fixing the poor performance of the book-to-market ratio
The authors effectively argue the case for intrinsic value and DCF based approaches to building Value factor strategies. The traditional value measures, especially the book-to-market ratio, are described as ineffective in today's market environment.
Global Factor Performance: August 2024
The following factor performance modules have been updated on our Index website.